NOPD to get help from three agencies
24th July 2017 · 0 Comments
The short-staffed New Orleans Police Department will get some much-needed help to deal with the rising tide of homicides and violent crime, thanks to a new agreement that will bolster its ranks with officers from the Louisiana State Police, U.S. Marshals and Probation and Parole Department.
“We’re working with [the agencies] on a daily basis for the entire summer, working to identify and pick up people who are wanted, making sure we’re creating criminal cases for those committing criminal violations and removing those people from the streets. That’s happening every single day,” NOPD Superintendent Michael Harrison said last week.
The NOPD currently has about 1,160 officers but city and police officials say the city needs 1,600 police officers to keep residents and visitors to the city safe. The NOPD has lost more than 400 police officers to retirement, defections, termination and prosecution since New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010.
The deployment of additional state troopers to the French Quarter will bolster the Louisiana State Police’s already-strong presence in the area. Harrison said last week that additional troopers will also patrol the rest of the city.
The support of the three law enforcement agencies comes as NOPD Supt. Harrison has been demanding more of his officers as the department makes an effort to increase its visibility to deter crime as part of the City of New Orleans’ $40 million crime initiative.
“We’re flexing overtime with a number of our officers working six days a week instead of five days a week so that we can create a seven-day coverage to create more visibility to deter crime and apprehend people who do it,” Harrison told FOX 8 News.
Harrison told FOX 8 that he understands the frustration after the recent violent attacks in the French Quarter. However, he pointed to NOPD crime stats that show violent crime is down 40 percent in the Quarter this year compared to 2016.
“A lot of people will tie criminal behavior and what the criminals do to something that’s happening in the police department. Let’s not forget, these are people who are making their own conscious decisions to go and commit crimes, and they are doing that when they know the police are not in a certain area because we can’t be everywhere,” Harrison said. “…We are out there every day and every night doing whatever it takes to find people who commit those violent crimes and hold them accountable.”
But LSU criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf told FOX 8 News that given the state’s budget crisis and law enforcement agencies cutting back, moving troopers to New Orleans fills a void, but it can also create one.
“In some ways you can argue, Lafourche Parish benefits from the quarter because of the tax base. But they don’t want to lose a state trooper for a patrol in the quarter,” Scharf said.
At least two Louisiana Republicans — U.S. Sen. John Kennedy and La. Attorney General Jeff Landry — have recommended that tha NOPD, which is currently in the midst of a federally mandated consent decree aimed at overhauling the troubled department, return to using an aggressive “stop and frisk” policy to get a handle on violent crime and the rising murder rate.
“It can work if it’s properly done,” Kennedy told WWL in an interview Tuesday.
Asher believes stop and frisk would not work in New Orleans. For one, the NOPD just does not have the manpower, Asher said. He also believes race plays a major factor.
“Eighty percent of New Orleans murder victims, pretty much every year since the 1980s, 80 percent have been Black men,” Asher said. “You can say that there’s not going to be a racial component, but if you want to be ‘efficient’ with it, then there’s going to be a racial component to it.”
Asher also said that stop and frisk could erode trust in the New Orleans Police Department.
“The consent decree, constitutional policing. All these things that NOPD has implemented over the last three or four years have led to higher community trust in the police department. Something like stop and frisk could have an extremely negative effect on that,” Asher said.
But with more than 700 people shot over the last 365 days, Kennedy strongly believes something should change.
“What I think the city leadership needs to do, for the rest of its administration — for the next 11 months — is concentrate on crime,” Kennedy told WWL.
Mayor Landrieu did respond to Kennedy’s comments, saying that making New Orleans safer has always and will continue to be his top priority.
Landrieu also said that while it’s campaign season, murder and violence should never become just another political football.
This article originally published in the July 24, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
